Strength-Based Diversity

Meritocracy, Equality, and Integration vs Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The official handshake of strength-based diversity. Source: Imgflip

When it comes to intergroup competition, diversity is often a strength. In 1933, Adolf Hitler expelled Jews from Germany’s state institutions, declaring that “If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.” More than 1000 fired scientists moved to the US, 15 went on to win Nobel prizes, and many were recruited to help develop the atomic bomb for the Allied side. Although Jews constituted only 0.5% of the US population at the time, they made up 21% of the Manhattan Project’s elite theoretical division. The Nazis’ own nuclear program suffered from the self-inflicted wound of excising many of the country’s top scientists, and Germany’s intellectual position in the world (from 1901 to 1932, Germany won more Nobel prizes than the US and the UK combined) never recovered. Although extreme, Hitler’s gift of scientific genius to his enemies was a replay of a familiar motif in Western history. 

Evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich attributes the West’s rise, in part, to political disunity coupled with relative cultural unity. Thus, he writes, individuals or entire groups “could escape oppression by moving to another patron, university, city, country, or continent.” On a sociopolitical scale, “Every time a king, guild, university, or religious community cracked down on some economically productive individuals or innovative groups, it lost in competition to its more tolerant and open counterparts.” For example, Catholic France persecuted the Protestant Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries, resulting in thousands of them fleeing to freer countries like Britain. Among them was Denis Papin, who contributed to the development of the steam engine, which kick-started the Industrial Revolution in Britain instead of his native France.¹ Today, nearly half of American Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. The US became leader of the West, and the world, in no small measure because of its ability to attract and absorb the best of other nations.²

But while proponents of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) may use the slogan “Diversity is our strength,” their primary goal isn’t to strengthen the overall group by ensuring equality of opportunity. Instead, it’s to achieve “social justice” by engineering equality of outcomes. Thus, for example, Silicon Valley has been widely criticized for having a “diversity problem” even though its workforce is disproportionately Asian and foreign-born, which hardly indicates a white supremacist, nativist hiring process. A representative CNBC article from 2018 calls out tech companies for not hiring enough candidates from “historically underrepresented groups,” while gliding over statistics like Google’s workforce being 35% Asian (compared with under 10% of the US population as a whole). Addressing “historic underrepresentation” is a social-justice goal, not a Google-strengthening goal. The connection between ancestral discrimination and coding ability is tenuous at best.

The article does try to tap into the “Diversity is our strength” argument, stating (without proof) that “a diverse workforce is a competitive advantage that drives productivity and profits as companies sell their products and services to a broad population.”³ However, the 2024 launch of Google’s roundly mocked, ultra-woke Gemini AI (which would only generate, for example, images of racially diverse Nazis) showed how a narrowly defined obsession with diversity achieves the opposite effect. The Free Press interviewed multiple ex-Googlers who “agreed that the Silicon Valley giant entered the artificial intelligence race with an upper hand but has squandered it by cowing to an activist faction in the company that’s more committed to advancing social justice than making world-class products.” Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls this phenomenon “structural stupidity,” in which confirmation bias and a fear of taking unpopular stands (ie, a lack of viewpoint diversity) results in groups of individually smart people making stupid decisions. After Google halted Gemini AI’s image generation feature in response to criticism, its parent company’s shares fell 5%. Far from strengthening Google, prioritizing social justice over ideologically neutral product quality has weakened the company.

Opposing DEI is often conflated with being against diversity as such, but the argument should really center on the kind of diversity that organizations are pursuing, and their methods in achieving those desired results. Representation-based diversity seeks to increase the percentage of “historically underrepresented groups” to combat perceived structural oppression. For example, almost half of large US universities require job applicants to write diversity statements that eliminate candidates who, to quote a UC Berkeley rubric, don’t “understand the personal challenges that underrepresented individuals face in academia, or feel any personal responsibility for helping to create an equitable and inclusive environment for all.” To quote sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, “What they want are non-straights, nonwhites and non-men. But they don’t say it that way.” The goal here is not to strengthen institutions by hiring the most qualified candidates, but to advance a secularized, identity-politics version of Matthew 20:16: “The last shall be first, and the first last.”

Strength-based diversity (or “based” diversity), on the other hand, seeks to take advantage of all available talent to achieve intergroup victory. For example, the French Foreign Legion was created in 1831 to allow foreign nationals, including deserters and criminals, to fight for the French army. Legionnaires are granted French citizenship after three years’ service or after being wounded in battle under a Français par le sang versé (French by spilled blood) provision. According to its website, “the ONLY way to join the Foreign Legion is to travel to mainland France (in Europe) and knock on the door of one of the Foreign Legion recruiting centers.” What DOES NOT matter (emphasis in original) when applying to join the Legion includes your citizenship, racial origin, religion, and social status. Legionnaires are not instructed to “feel personal responsibility for creating an equitable and inclusive environment for all” but rather to “close your mouth, forget about your past, and adapt as quickly as possible.”

The French Foreign Legion implicitly adheres to the principles of MEI (meritocracy, equality, and integration), which is based diversity’s answer to DEI. To compare:

• Diversity as a principle focuses on quantitative representation of “historically underrepresented” groups. Meritocracy as a principle focuses on qualitative suitability for a role. 

• Equity as a principle treats people differently depending on their group’s historical disadvantages or “privilege.” Equality as a principle treats individuals the same regardless of background. 

• Inclusion as a principle celebrates public displays of difference. Integration as a principle celebrates public displays of unity. 

Because they promote collective cohesion and individual agency, MEI principles take charge in tight-knit organizations faced with fierce intergroup competition (eg, armies, sports teams, startups). DEI, conversely, takes root in established, comfortable institutions looking to divide existing spoils (eg, government agencies, elite universities, large corporations). MEI dominates on the battlefield; DEI flowers in safe spaces.⁴

Diversity, when achieved via MEI principles, is a strength. In 2022, the Chinese Communist Party selected its 20th Politburo, who form the ruling echelon of the totalitarian state. All 24 members are ethnically Han Chinese, and none are women.⁵ While meritocracy doesn’t preordain results, it reflects rather well on the US that Donald Trump’s cabinet better recognized the talents of Chinese women (Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao) than China’s own leadership. From a based diversity perspective, homogeneity indicates cronyism and conformism, which stifle innovation, adaptability, and, ultimately, competitiveness. But a diversity that’s been bureaucratically mandated and socially engineered is equally stifling and just as indicative of a maladaptive selection process. To take “Diversity is our strength” seriously is to question diversity as conceived by DEI ideology, and to envision what diversity based on strength actually looks like. MEI may not lead to social justice, but a diversity founded on meritocracy, equality, and integration is more likely to achieve societal victory.

1. See Chapter 13 in Henrich’s 2020 book The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.

2. Including those whom other nations hardly saw as their “best.” As John Adams wrote in 1765, “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder—as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”

3. Consulting firm McKinsey has released papers arguing for diversity’s positive impact on corporate performance. However, they have been widely criticized for methodological flaws.

4. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, veterans sharply criticize efforts to extend DEI to the US military: “Selflessness, which has been vital to the warrior ethos for generations, requires subordination of self and subgroup identity and the ability to regard teammates’ racial and ethnic differences as inconsequential. In the Army and Marines, sayings such as ‘We’re all green’ or ‘We all bleed red’ were part of training that transformed millions of diverse civilians into war fighters. . . . Viewpoint diversity can be beneficial even in an autocratic organization such as the military. What’s harmful is the Defense Department’s uncritical focus, through DEI, on racial differences that has weakened the colorblind warrior culture, eroded morale, undermined unit cohesion, and compromised combat effectiveness.”

5. For reference, China is 91% ethnically Han Chinese and 51% male. Minority ethnic groups include the Zhuang, Manchus, and Uyghurs.